1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for preemptive thermal management for a computing system based on cache performance.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
In order to deliver powerful computing resources, computer architects must design powerful computer processors and high-speed memory modules. Current high-speed memory modules, for example, may operate well beyond a billion cycles per second. Operating these computer processors and memory modules requires a significant amount of power, which creates increasingly challenging thermal management considerations. Current cooling solutions monitor temperature sensors either on devices or sensors that detect exhaust airflow temperatures. After these temperatures exceed certain thresholds, current solutions invoke external processes or mechanisms to increase the amount of cooling in an effort to reduce overall the temperature. The drawback to these solutions, however, is that such solutions respond to temperature increases after the increases in temperature have actually occurred. Often the lag time between the cooling system's response and any effect of the response on the temperature results in temperature thresholds being exceeded, warning messages being generated, or in more extreme cases thermal shutdown or failure.